Syria's leader, Bashar al-Assad, is featured on flags for sale in Damascus. The president has announced a series of 'reforms'. Photograph: Youssef Badawi/EPA

With the protests in Syria apparently growing, President Bashar al-Assad has begun announcing a series of "reforms" aimed at placating two key groups: the Sunni Muslim majority – especially the more conservative elements within it – and the marginalised Kurdish minority. If either or both of these groups were to swing firmly behind the street protests the regime would be in serious trouble.

Kurds account for about 10% of Syria's population and over the last half-century or so the ruling Ba'athists have made strenuous efforts to "Arabise" them by suppressing their distinctive culture and language. Their plight has been documented in detail by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Chatham House, among others.

As a result of a census carried out in 1962 to identify "alien infiltrators", about 200,000 Kurds in the north-eastern province of al-Hasakah are officially classified as foreigners. This has been a contentious issue for years and Assad has now issued a decree granting them citizenship as "Syrian Arabs".

Whether this will make any difference to their daily lives remains to be seen. The regime has been making similar promises of citizenship since 2004. In 2005, Refugees International noted that Assad had ordered the local authorities to help "a large number of stateless Kurds obtain their nationality" but it added: "To date, there has been no concrete follow-up."

A careful reading of Assad's announcement also shows that the citizenship offer it is not quite what it seems. It applies to Kurds who are registered as "foreigners" but excludes a further 80,000-100,000 unregistered or "concealed" Kurds (known as maktoumeen) who suffer even worse discrimination.

On the religious front, Assad seems to be going out of his way to please Sunni obscurantists. He has lifted the ban on teachers wearing niqab (the face veil), which was introduced last July, and the closure has been announced of Syria's only casino, which opened in December. The latter is actually a pretend-reform, because the authorities had already called a halt to its activities a month before the protests erupted on the streets.

Assad has also reportedly promised to allow a religious TV channel and an Islamist political party, and to establish an institute for training imams.

The Assad family, along with many senior figures in the regime, belong to the minority Alawite sect (generally regarded as a branch of Shia Islam). To survive and avoid sectarian strife, they need to keep the Sunni majority on board. But by empowering religious elements the president may also be dabbling in a game that other Arab leaders have played very effectively over the years: scaring the public by presenting Islamists as the only alternative to their own dictatorship.

Meanwhile, there is nothing very concrete in the reform area to appeal to the average Syrian. If the president wanted to do something truly popular, he would start by tackling privilege and corruption at the top – by ordering his cousin Rami Makhlouf, his brother Maher and his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat to leave the country. But that is a fairly forlorn hope.

There are promises that the 48-year-old state of emergency will soon be lifted but that depends on replacing it with a new anti-terrorism law – which could turn out to be almost as bad. The Mubarak regime in Egypt made similar promises over a period of years but its draft anti-terrorism law was heavily criticised by a UN special rapporteur and the emergency was still in place when the regime fell.

Opening up the system to new political parties is another promise on the table but, again, a lot will depend on how this might be implemented. Most of the Arab countries that allow multiple parties have a lot of restrictions to keep them from winning power and it's doubtful whether Syria, considering the regime's control-freak mentality, would be any different.

Also, there is little point in anyone forming a political party and seeking to win seats in parliament when the parliament itself is a rubber-stamp body with next to no power. To change that, Syria needs a thorough overhaul of its constitution, something which does not appear to be on offer at the moment.

The crucial question – which may be answered on the streets in the next few days – is how many Syrians believe that Assad is serious about change and able to implement it. They are already long-accustomed to government announcements of reform but less accustomed to seeing them put into practice.